This week I’m in Hong Kong! It’s my first time in Asia so I wanted to make sure I got some tourist time in. I arrived via a Singapore airline flight on Sunday and spent the day catching up on some things and attempting to stay awake so I could adjust to the time zone. Sunday evening I met up with some of my colleagues for dinner and we made plans to go down to Kowloon on Monday.
A rainy Monday arrived as I met several colleagues for breakfast before splitting off into groups to head out for the day. I went out with Khai Do, Clark Boylan and Ghe Rivero down to Kowloon to check out their electronics street market.
I didn’t buy anything, but I did learn about the popularity of dashboard mounted cameras here. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen one prominently for sale in the US but they were everywhere we looked in the market. While we were wandering around the street markets I let my travel companions know of my quest for the day: tourist trinkets, post cards and to eat an egg custard (MJ told me I had to try one while I was in Hong Kong!).
First up was the egg custard, which didn’t disappoint:
We then hopped back on the subway and headed over to Hong Kong Central for my tourist goodies. While we were there we also found Ice House Street, for which the next OpenStack release is named after. We got the obligatory photo-near-the-sign (thanks to Ghe for taking our photo):
I found my post cards and tourist trinkets there and we spent a lot of time walking around Central (my Fitbit tells me we walked about 5 miles before going back to the hotel) and finally settled on a place to eat. I went with the soy chicken and rice and realized I’m terribly spoiled by boneless meat I usually have in Chinese food at home. Bone in is much trickier to eat! But the meal was enjoyable and really hit the spot after all the walking in the hot, soggy weather.
We wrapped up lunch around 2PM and headed back to the hotel and expo center, arriving just in time for the opening of summit registration at 3PM. I then swung by my room quickly to drop off my conference goodies before taking the train back down to Hong Kong Central for a Women of OpenStack boat tour of the harbor.
Unfortunately the rain had picked up a bit by the evening and we ended up with quite the soggy and choppy boat ride, but the boat was very cool and I had some nice conversations, in spite of my shyness.
The evening wrapped up with all of us heading to a small bar where we enjoyed small plates and drinks before splitting off for the evening. And that wrapped up my day! The rest of this week will be spent on the OpenStack Summit. I then have Saturday and much of Sunday to squeeze some more tourist stuff in before I fly home, I’d love to see the Tian Tan Buddha and if the weather cooperates it’s terribly tempting to go to Disneyland.